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(Just in case: Mods, this post quotes pieces of more than four different paragraphs of the pope's speech. I would think a public papal speech would be in the public domain, but even if not, this usage seems to fit the "fair use" exception based on being literary critique and analysis, non-commercial, not likely to have any negative impact on the speech's commercial value to the pope, appropriate to an educational purpose, uses a small amount of the original and only as necessary to make the points, and several other factors. My statement is based on the actual meaning of "fair use" and not on the common internet misinterpretation that "I think it's fair, so I'll use it.")
I finally read the whole thing. First, a couple preliminary observations:
1. It's a highly intellectual speech given to a highly intellectual group of theologians, and he clearly revels in being back among academics in academia. So, no wonder some find it dismal and boring. I found it fascinating in places, difficult almost throughout because of my lack of knowledge of the theological terms and history.
2. Although the opening and the closing seem to suggest that one major point of the speech is to discuss how have a Christian-Muslim dialogue, it's pretty much a failure on that point. I suspect that he didn't use an outline in writing it, because if he had used an outline, he would have realized that it didn't accomplish its purpose and that much of it was digression from digression.
So here's how I read his speech.
After the obligatory initial comments, greetings, and reminiscences about his old days in the academy, he names the subject of his talk, to raise the question of God through the use of reason. As we will see, the question itself presumes its own answer and prejudices the discussion and the conclusion.
So then he immediately launches into the part that caused all the ruckus, telling the story of the Byzantine Christian emperor and the Persian Muslim scholar. He says, "(the emperor) addresses his interlocutor (the Persian scholar) with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached"."
In my opinion, his observation of the emperor's "startling brusqueness" clearly shows his own awareness of the inflammatory nature of the quotation.
The emperor continues, "Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. 'God', he says, 'is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably ... is contrary to God's nature.'" And the pope concludes, "The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature."
The pope goes on, "But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." Note that this use of the word "transcendent" is not the same as the New England Transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau.
He then goes into a discussion of logos, the Greek word which is translated as "word" in the beginning of the gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word." The Greek word means much more than the English word "word," and includes reason. And he concludes that, in the Christian tradition, God acts reasonably and in accord with his own nature. This is in contrast to the "transcendent" Muslim view in which God can act any way at all, and more specifically, holy war can be okay even though God is a God of peace. (gross paraphrasing here)
About this time, I'm thinking, "Hey, wait a minute. I hear Christians all the time using this transcendent argument. Whenever I ask one how they can reconcile that God, who is love and loves all his children, could command the Israelites to murder every man, woman, boy, and cow of the neighboring tribe and take their virgin girls as slaves, they always answer something along the lines of 'God can do anything he wants and, by definition, it's still good because he's God. God doesn't have to act in accordance with the nature of God, and he doesn't have to obey his own rules."
But the pope starts, apparently, to address my issue. He talks about some historical thought in Christendom that approaches the transcendent view, "{theological gobbledegook, to me}. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn (the Persian scholar) and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness."
However, intead of addressing my issue about Christians embracing a transcendent God instead of a God of logos and reason, instead of addressing why he believes the Christian (as he sees it) view of logos and reason is more appropriate (I almost said more reasonable, which would have betrayed my bias on the subject), and instead of addressing how we can engage in a dialogue with those of a different view, he goes off on a very long tangent on the history of "dehellenization," of decoupling or trying to decouple Christian theology from the Greek world of logos and reason.
Along the way, he veers off on another tangent, explaining why a non-empirical study such as theology belongs in the modern university.
Finally, apparently having refuted to his own satisfaction all heresies of non-hellenism, he tells an anecdote of Socrates that basically says, "having taken all this time to discuss all these 'false philophical opinions,' don't despair and mock inquiry and thus be 'deprived of the truth of existence.'" In other words, don't let all these heretics make you think it isn't worth finding out the real truth that I have.
And he concludes the talk with this: "'Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God,' said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor.
"It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures."
So, having not really addressed the Muslim transcendent view nor discussed how we can have a dialogue with those of such a different view, he invites them to join him at the logos table and have a talk. It sounds like he went to the George W. Bush School of Diplomacy, where they teach the prime dictum of diplomacy: If you accept my view in advance and agree to all my premises in advance, then we can have a discussion about our differences.
And here are my conclusions about it.
1. Although he appears to be trying to address how the Christian West can have a dialogue with the Muslim East, he never does address that, except to say, "We're right and they're wrong." His solution is for Muslims to accept the Catholic Christian view and join us in talk at the logos table. How odd.
2. As his "startling brusqueness" comment shows, he had a pretty good idea of how inflammatory that quote was. And the quote doesn't even contribute anything to his argument. He told enough of the story that he could have left out the whole paragraph and his argument would have been, if anything, clearer and more free-flowing. So did he put it in to be deliberately inflammatory? Or to get in a dig or a they're-evil comment or to be condescending? Or was it simply a case of an academic revelling in being back in academia and being unable to resist inserting a footnotable reference? Or some other reason? I can't say, but it seems just dumb to have used it.
3. Having been the head of the office of the Inquisition and now being in a position to make 'infallible' pronouncements have clearly gone to his head.
4. I learned that I'm apparently a Hellenist, since I think that God acts according to his own nature and follows his own rules.
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